I can imagine an objector urging, after all I have said, that God need not have worked by the method of evolution. Why has He done so if it entails such disastrous consequences? We cannot give a complete answer to that question. Is it reasonable to expect that we should be able to do so? No one who has studied the concluding chapter of the first part of Butler's Analogy (a work now too little read) can answer that question in the affirmative. I mean the chapter "On the government of God considered as a scheme or constitution imperfectly comprehended." Can we lift up our eyes to the starry heavens where millions of worlds disclose their presence in ever-increasing number, recognizing at the same time that our world is almost the tiniest of them all, and that even on it the microscope reveals a universe of life and activity, law and order pervading the whole-can we, I say, realize all this and seriously think that the brief denizen of this world can fathom and comprehend the entire scheme and pass judgment to the effect that the Almighty would have done better to proceed on this plan rather than on that ?

This only we can say, and with this I conclude. As there is something nobler in the life of the man who, starting from a lowly birth with imperfect education and disadvantageous surroundings, slowly pushes his way upwards in spite of formidable difficulties and occasional reverses to a position of power and widespread influence than there is in the life of a man born within easy grasp of these good things, so, when we are able to take

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in retrospect a wide survey of the whole history of the human race, we shall acknowledge its struggling career up to its final achievement to be a nobler work of God than if it had been created perfect from the first.

XIV

WILL OUR CHILDREN SEE GOD'S GLORY?

"Let thy work appear unto thy servants and thy glory unto their children."-PSA. xc. 16 (A. V.)1

A TINGE of sadness colours this psalm. The writer is deeply impressed with the brevity of life. He sees the successive generations of men fading away like a dream, cut down like grass by the mower's scythe. He is almost overwhelmed with the thought of the troublous changefulness of all that is human. But in the midst of the rushing tide that sweeps men into oblivion rises up the Rock of Ages, unmoved, unchanging. "Before the mountains were brought forth or ever Thou hadst formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting Thou art God." For the psalmist and his fathers this eternal God had been a refuge and a dwelling-place in all generations. We too have known the encircling embrace of the Everlasting Arms and hope ever to abide in it. Our desires for ourselves and for our children are summed up in this-to know that God is, and is ever working His will, using us as His instruments all through the change and tumult of life's history. We want no more for ourselves or them. Let

1 The R. V. and Delitzsch have " upon" their children, but De Wette in his translation supports the reading of the A. V.

Thy work appear unto Thy servants and Thy glory unto their children."

We have closed a century prolific in new ideas and fresh discoveries. We watch the tide of knowledge sweeping onwards, carrying away much that was to us venerable and dear. We wonder sometimes what will survive, and what that new world will be like in which the next generation will live. Will it be a better world than this or a worse? It will certainly be a larger world, a world where possibilities now undreamed of are realized. Our children and our children's children, what will they behold? What, to keep the word of our text, will appear unto them?

Much, doubtless, that lies hidden from our view. As the instruments of scientific research are perfected the heavens and the earth will unfold to them new visions. Rocks and rivers, ocean bed and mountain stream will yield up many a secret hitherto untold. New forces not less marvellous than electricity or radio-activity will be discovered to do them service, and new applications of forces already known, which would fill us with amazement, will be to them things of common sight and daily use. They will doubtless be able to perceive laws which govern with undeviating regularity phenomena that seem to us capricious. The interaction of mind and matter may not be to them the insoluble problem that it is to us. The dimly discerned energy which we vaguely call psychic force may be comprehended in all its workings. New worlds will open beneath their feet and above their head, and the music of the spheres-the old

Pythagorean fancy-may be audible to them in real intelligible song. For them, too, the world that was will live again. The world of bygone civilizations, partially known indeed to us, will be more clearly beheld by them as the investigations commenced in our days are carried forward. Monumental inscriptions, tablets, whole literatures which now lie buried beneath the dust of centuries will be raised, deciphered and pieced together. These will present their pictures and unfold their history with vivid truthfulness; and before our children's eyes will pass a long procession of kings and peoples who lived and fought and toiled and sang millenniums back, when even Egypt was but a rising power. Young lads in our schools will hear the story of their manners and customs, their ambitious aims and daring efforts, their conquests and defeats, their growth, empire and overthrow. Our imagination may amuse itself by trying to conjure up some dim outline of the prospect that will spread before our children's eyes as they confront the social conditions of the next century and look down the ever-widening vistas of human knowledge; but what we want most surely to ascertain, the question we ask with tremulous earnestness is-amid all these new and varied scenes will the glory of God appear unto them as it did unto their fathers?

It will be there; doubtless it will be there, shining with undiminished lustre, for this glory cannot perish or decay, and in a sense they will see it. Long after our orbs of vision are dried in their sockets young eyes will look up to the spangled wonders of the midnight heavens and behold the morning